


dissolvit ut glaciem

by orphan_account



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: I write meh stories, M/M, Prompt Fill, X-Men First Class Kink Meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-19
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-13 21:25:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2165763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for this prompt over at xmen-firstkink: </p><p>"Charles wasn't disabled by the bullet, but he was captured by someone evil after he was left on the beach. He was tortured into insanity and winds up kind of like River from Firefly. So... powerful, dangerous, vulnerable, the whole shebang.</p><p>It's a shock for Erik to see him again in DoFP, with Charles as this powerful but completely insane mutant. Charles has been able to heal over the last few years, but there's still some damage. </p><p>Would love them to get together."</p>
            </blockquote>





	dissolvit ut glaciem

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally hella longer; it grew beyond my control at about 10,000 words and still no plot, so I salvaged a few bits from that monstrosity (because I’d already written the porn, and I liked the porn) and gave it a new plot. That said, thank the PTBs this is done, even if I still think it’s rather meh. Title is Latin ("It dissolves (them) like ice") from Carmina Burana.
> 
> Also of note: I say Hank/Charles but I mean, “Hank is Simon Tam.”

_It’s cold. It’s cold and there are these_ voices _, but they’re not the voices Charles is used to, the comforting chatter of other people around him—they’re_ different _, internalized, they’re not real and he_ knows _it isn’t the man in front of him, knows—_

_“We’ve stripped your amygdala,” the man in the cowl says._

_And damned if he isn’t_ smart _enough to know what that means, and damned if he can do anything about it, a smart man, a happy man, a failure who couldn’t keep his promises, a fearful man who whimpers softly and tries to ask what the cowled man wants but he can’t_ tell _, there’s a blank space where his mind should be…_

_The cowled man clasps his hands behind his back. “We’ve also taken the liberty of implanting a few…triggers, shall we say.” He smiles behind his mask. “Hail Hydra.”_

_There’s a bang and light and Charles passes clean out._

***

Hank is next to the bed in an instant when Charles awakens with a shout. As he usually does, even with the serum dulling his—something, the professor curls into a ball atop the sheets, making scared little noises that hurt Hank’s heart terribly. Across the room, a drawer opens and slams shut. A pile of genetics texts, all written by Prof. Charles F. Xavier, dump themselves onto the floor.

Hank feels Charles’s mind brush against his, no longer the delicate press of the refined ability, but the hard tackle of the paranoid empath. He focuses on thinking happy thoughts, comforting thoughts, and eventually Charles’s touch rescinds and Hank can pull at Charles’s arm until the needle goes in smoothly.

“I had a bad dream,” Charles says, eyes never leaving the syringe. 

“I know,” Hank soothes, running a hand over the professor’s hair habitually. 

“I don’t think I’ve awakened yet,” he murmurs, face crumpling as tears start behind his eyes. 

This has become the simple reality, these past few years; though the serum helps, Charles will never be as he was once, whole and hale and clever, picking up sorority girls at bars with lines about _groovy mutations_. With any luck, Hank makes it through a day without things mysteriously bursting into flames, falling and breaking, exploding. Without his mind being invaded harshly. Without another crazed attempt at—well, the last one had been “seeing if he bled like a man.” 

The cowled man who called himself the Doctor had fixed Charles’s spine. He’d broken…everything else.

Charles’s sobs dull down to anguished whimpers, and the electricity in the room, threatening disaster, seems to calm with him. 

Hank lets go of him as gently as he can, letting the professor fall back against the pillows, fast asleep again. He exits the room, but not before turning and watching Charles’s latest puzzle, a pair of interlocking iron rings, solve and unsolve itself midair over and over.

***

One day soon after that, Hank’s lab door slams open of its own accord. They don’t get a lot of visitors here, but they get enough that Hank knows Charles’s response to callers when he hears it. 

As he answers the front door, courteously as you like, every fiber of his being stands on end. This guy, his rough voice and rougher demeanor, raises Hank’s hackles fiercely, even as he demands to see the professor.

“There’s no professor here,” Hank insists politely. “The school closed years ago. Please leave.”

He needs to protect the last bit of— He needs to protect _Charles_ , at all costs, and if that means turning away visitors or destroying the whole world, he will. Starting with this guy, who tackles in the door and commences _fighting_ him.

The collateral damage is significantly less than it was during Charles’s last spectacular meltdown, but still not small. This guy, Logan, he has claws and spite working in his favor, and he never seems to stay down for long. Hank, though, he has to keep Charles _safe_ , and he will die to do that if he has to, he’ll die covered in bright blue fur and bleeding from wounds made by claws of bone.

He’s finally gotten Logan on the defensive when they’re pulled apart by an unseen hand, Logan flung to one corner of the room and Hank to another. Logan stays down. Hank scrambles to his feet as fast as he can, watching Charles descend the stairs slowly, an uncertain look on his face.

“Hank,” he calls, sounding hesitant. “I heard voices.”

Charles’s mind reaches out again, brushing over Hank’s with a whisper of _familiar_ and then—

Logan jumps to his feet with a shout, tearing at his hair, fingers raking over his temples. Charles turns his eyes on the newcomer, a vague, concerned expression pinching his fine features. Logan’s shout peters out into a constant wail, and the mutant falls to his knees. Charles never once moves from his position on the stairs.

Much as Hank dislikes this Logan guy viscerally, he runs to Charles quickly, breaking Charles’s eye contact with the bent form on the floor. 

The wailing ceases immediately, and Charles gives Hank a bright smile. “We have company!”

“Charles…” Hank begins, but Logan has come back to himself, and now he speaks to Charles.

“Prof, you’re batshit fuckin’ insane and I need your help.”

***

The study door slams shut. Logan jumps. “Got yourself a ghost in the walls, Beast,” he mutters angrily, and Hank’s smile falls, becoming something sad. 

“No,” he murmurs. “Only the professor.” A searching tendril of thought pushes at his mind, and Hank thinks as clearly as he can, _All is well_. He begins to explain to Logan what has transcended since Cuba, how it has come to this, Hank and Charles shut away in Xavier Mansion for years now.

Hank is perhaps halfway through his explanation—he’s gotten to the point where Charles was taken by the Doctor—when the professor enters the study unannounced, and Hank can’t say whether he turned the doorknob or the knob turned itself. 

“Sorry,” Charles chirps, and Hank is suddenly focused single-mindedly on Logan again, and Logan on him, as he resumes his story compulsively. Charles flits over to the bookshelf embedded into the wall, running his fingertips down the spine of each book in turn. 

Hank hears himself say the phrase “stripped his amygdala,” and Logan nods uncomprehendingly. “It’s…part of your brain, really a couple of parts,” Hank indicates roughly at his own head, “and…when you experience strong emotion, fear, anger, worry, whatever—but you don’t want to be scared or mad or anxious, your amygdala is—“ He tries to tear his eyes away to shoot a gaze at Charles, but finds he physically can’t. His mouth forms Charles’s words, Charles’s explanation. 

“Your amygdala is what lets you compartmentalize those emotions,” Hank says mechanically. “You can push them back.” Charles’s lips are moving with his own, Hank sees on the edge of his peripheral vision. “Stripping the amygdala removes that ability. Charles—“ The hand guiding his jaw lifts, and Hank’s shoulders drop noticeably. “Charles,” he finishes, his own words now, “is sort of…flooded by everything. He _feels_ everything. And his abilities…”

Logan nods, making a considering noise.

“I think they wanted him out of commission. Either that, or they were…trying to make a weapon of him.”

“Yeah, I know the guys,” Logan grumbles, stubbing his cigar out on the table between them. Hank winces. Charles, at the bookcase, mutters something about manticores, which Logan studiously ignores. “Call ‘emselves ‘Hydra.’ Nasty pieces of work. They’re the ones responsible for Captain America’s—friend, too.” Though the Winter Soldier could hardly be called ‘friend,’ it’s the easiest explanation to give. “How’d you get him out?”

Even through his thick glasses, Hank manages to give Logan a withering look. 

“Very carefully,” Hank answers grudgingly. “I don’t see how it’s your concern.”

“Need to know whether they’re out for blood.”

Charles floats out of the room, empty-handed, the door swinging closed silently behind him. Hank shakes his head at Logan. “What you see…whatever they did, they were close enough to done, they didn’t come after us.”

When Logan opens his mouth to ask another question, Hank cuts him off. “Explain what you mean by _needing Charles’s help_. I’ve told you more than enough.”

Logan launches into his explanation of—well, it sounds incredible, but Charles did say, before, that Logan would tell the truth. Charles and Erik… (In the distance, a door slammed.) …have sent one of their comrades back to the 70s to get Charles and Erik to save Mystique, save the world.

Hank endures the lengthy story with a healthy amount of skepticism, but before Logan can petition for his assistance again, Hank stands from the wing chair that was once Charles’s favorite. “Excuse me, I—“ _have to give Charles the serum soon_. “I have to do…something… Wait here,” he dismisses himself, quitting the room quickly, patting the pocket of his lab coat to make sure the syringe still remains in place.

He comes across Charles in one of the drawing rooms, sitting in front of a burnt-out fireplace and moving chipped chess pieces around a board without using his hands. “They have metal cores,” Charles murmurs as Hank pushes up the sleeve of his soft blue cardigan, feeling out the vein in his arm. As the needle meets its mark, Charles’s eyes, piercing and clear blue, meet Hank’s. “Tell Logan I’ll help him,” he says rapidly, and turns his attention back to the chessboard.

***

When Charles’s first words to Peter are, “Hair like metal, now that _is_ suspicious,” Peter’s eyebrow shoots into his hairline.

“He’s batshit fucking insa—“ One of Peter’s crates of stolen goods crashes to the floor.

Logan nods commiseratively. Hank frets in the corner of his vision, clearly torn between trying to act normal—as normal as Beast can—and reassuring the professor again, that impulsive touch on his hair. His crazy’s been minimally destructive thus far. Logan counts his blessings as far as that’s concerned. 

He isn’t sure how long this streak of luck can run.

In retrospect, he shouldn’t have held out for it running much further. 

***

While Peter does the infiltrating bit of their little operation—read, "breaking into the Pentagon—" Charles and Hank play decoy, or possibly befuddled tourist. With Hank’s hand periodically flying up to rest on the professor’s neck gently, though, he seems much less prone to psychically tripping alarms or breaking things, generally a plus in covert operations.

“Taking him out the ‘in’ door,” Charles grumbles. “He’s going to be so very testy.”

Hank sighs. “And you?”

Charles smiles bitterly. “Hair like metal. Such a handsome lad.” Hank’s unsure what to make of that, so he presses a bit further, praying that Logan, Peter, and the target don’t come around a corner suddenly.  “It’s uncomfortable—so crowded in here—“ Charles continues, and Hank recognizes the uneasy tone that comes before a breakdown.

“Let’s finish this mission, and then we’ll leave,” he whispers, lips against Charles’s ear, fingers threading through his hair. 

The professor’s power sweeps out in a tangible _pulse_ , and he speeds off like a bolt in the direction of the kitchens. 

They happen upon the other members of their little operation rather quicker than Hank would have altogether liked, in the kitchens, but no one has time to be shocked or surprised; _actual_ security arrives, and, with them, guns (and a menagerie of other fun weapons). 

Quicksilver makes a motion to deflect the bullets as they’re shot; their captive is totally ineffective in dealing with these particular models, it seems. Even as Peter shoots (pun intended) into motion, though, the bullets drop from their paths, too quickly for anyone but him to comprehend.

As he zooms around the kitchen, setting the guards up to knock themselves cold and let the five of them walk out, though, he glimpses Xavier, standing stock-still except for the secretive smile that spreads across his lips, the finger he presses against them as he locks his eyes with Peter’s and strikes the bullets to the ground. ‘Cept he never touches them.

They get away clean, taking their high-profile criminal captive with them. When they reach the airport, Charles stuck inside his own head for the entire journey, a private jet—who has a private jet, really—waits for four of them. Peter’s shepherded into another car, told to go home, keep his nose clean.

He watches the other four conspirators (three conspirators and a captive) board the plane and thanks whoever’s listening that he doesn’t have to go with them. That crazy professor isn’t just a reader, he could tell. He’s dangerous, and God help whoever pisses him off too much.

***

“Fancy a game?”

“ _No_.” The board knocks itself to the floor of the plane.

“I mean no offense.” 

Sullen silence from the geneticist in the seat opposite. His occasionally-furry caretaker makes spastic almost-grasping motions in the cockpit. 

“What have you to say for yourself, old friend?” Erik baits. Charles remains silent. “You left me in my cell to die.” The hull of the plane creaks ominously. Erik smiles. 

“You deserved it,” Charles whispers finally, and Erik’s temper flares. The metal continues its creaking, but now he could not have said whether it was his own doing or Charles’s, the entirety of the plane narrowing to the two of them. It’s always been the two of them. “You—“

“I wanted to _protect_ our kind! You would have us turned into living experiments!” Like everything they do, it escalates alarmingly quickly, _everything_. Charles rips up the table at the roots, never laying a hand on it, and stands, assuming a fighting stance opposite Erik’s. 

“I would _never,_ ” Charles grinds out wrathfully.

The hull dents.

Logan comes rushing at them, hands out in surrender, saying something about standing down. The air crackles with unspent energy. Charles’s mind swirls in all the eddies of power, but never nears Erik’s own consciousness. Logan is thrown back by a whip of that energy, but recovers quickly. 

“Break his line of sight!” Dr. McCoy’s voice seems distant to Erik, much farther away than just the cockpit. 

Following instinct or instruction, Logan does just that, throwing himself, the martyr, between Erik and Charles. “Charles,” he pleads, and the air settles. Erik nudges the plane back into the correct shape, still unsure which of them did the damage. 

Murmuring to the professor, Logan escorts him none-too-gently to an unbroken table, Erik settling in across from him once more. Calling one of the chess pieces to him—the black queen—he sets it to swirling about the table lazily. “You could have crushed me,” he says conversationally, eyes sliding down to Charles’s face. 

Charles refuses to meet his gaze. “Untrustworthy. Would never enter that mind.”

Making a small noise of assent, Erik descends into silence.

Logan sinks into the booth across the aisle. “When we get to Paris, the mission is to neutralize Mystique. No one’s getting shot, no one’s getting dead, least on our side. Capeesh?” 

Erik raises his eyebrow again. Charles nods infinitesimally.  “Trask?” Erik questions, not unwarrantedly.

“I said ‘on _our_ side,’ didn’t I?”

The professor speaks up quietly. “Cut off one head, two remain.”

Logan hums. Obviously, that _means_ something to him. “I’ve dispatched Peter to deal with the prototypes. Kid’s second-best quality’s his ability to break stuff. He’s better at it where I come from, but he’s good people. He’ll get it done.”

“I’ve missed something,” Erik murmurs.

“Alright, kiddo, exposition time,” Logan declares, puffing at his cigar—which promptly snuffs out.

“Disgusting habit,” Charles mutters, falling silent again.

Logan rolls his eyes far enough back that Erik becomes mildly concerned, but puts the cigar down. “As I was sayin’, here’s what you’ve missed.” He explains about the time travel, the alliance between Charles-and-Erik of the future, and the Sentinels that stand a good chance of wiping them out. “…and in the future, I don’t know when, someone gets ahold of Charles and—undoes whatever was done. Can’t be real specific, but it’s like…nothing happened to him after the beach. He went home and got stuck in a wheelchair.” 

At the same time as Erik winces, Charles makes a grab for his hand, which Erik pulls out of his reach reflexively. “The clock turns back, but the hands don’t reach,” Charles declares, mentally seizing Erik’s chess piece and sending it whizzing around the plane. 

This Charles, the metal-bender ponders as he watches the queen fly in manic loop-the-loops, is a ton more interesting than the boring, color-in-the-lines type he’d known so long ago. He’d been falling for that Charles, far too fast and deep. This Charles… Of course he’s no danger, at least in that sense. He is simply…interesting. 

“Your eyes aren’t in the back of your head,” Charles quips, still sending the queen around and around. 

“Thought you weren’t coming back in my head,” Erik retorts calmly.

The geneticist shakes his head fervently. “Can’t be trusted.” After a beat, he continues, “Can’t help if you think so loudly. Quite unsubtle, like beating an anvil. You spend too much time with metal.”

When he sends the queen flying at Erik, Erik catches it midair and smiles.

***

All in all, Paris is a cinch. If Charles weren’t batshit fucking insane, the detainment of Mystique and the neutralization of Bolivar Trask probably wouldn’t have gone quite as smoothly as it does, but Logan’s always been a glass-half-full kind of guy. He chooses not to notice Erik’s longing glance at the assassin as she’s crowded into an armored car. Let Interpol deal with her. 

She’ll get out, she always does. 

His sitrep from Quicksilver is also positive, the Sentinel prototypes destroyed. What did he say? Kid’s good at breaking stuff. (Logan knows all too well. He’d been a mess for a long time. That’s not happening again.)

Hank sits down with Charles on the (non-private) plane back to New York and they have hushed conversation about the school. It’s crucial that he reopen it, but Logan’s not touching that with a ten-foot pole yet. 

Erik isn’t so wise, and he walks over to the first-class lounge where Hank and Charles are practically on top of one another, Beast’s hand tangled in Charles’s hair and stroking gently, and cuts into their conversation with all the grace of someone who tends to rip things out of people’s hands. He gets maybe one word in edgewise before Charles mutters, “It’s incredibly _rude—_ “ and Erik is flung away, hitting the wall of the plane hard enough that the glass window gives an ominous creak.

For the first time since they started this shenanigan, Erik looks _scared_.

It’s a new look on the fabled Magneto. 

“…to interrupt when one is speaking,” Charles finishes his sentence, Hank’s face a study in worried anticipation. 

Erik’s good at self-preservation, though, so he doesn’t push again, and Charles doesn’t shove. 

Logan is idly flipping an unlit cigar through his fingers when Erik sits next to him, his jaw held with a stubborn tightness, his neck and back stiff. Logan slides his drink—something with vodka, which is disgusting, even if it’s expensive—toward Erik, who tosses it back with a grimace as it burns on the way down. 

He doesn’t have adamantium fused to his skeleton yet. It’s safe to look over at Erik, raise an eyebrow, and say, “That’s a heady mix you’re givin’ off there, bub.” 

The metallokinetic smells like _fear_ and _jealousy_ and _want_ all at the same time, a smell Logan can’t really recall on anyone except maybe Wilson, once upon a time. Erik just looks like his delicate sensibilities have been offended, but Logan buys it exactly not-at-all. “Is it Beast?”

“Dr. McCoy is perfectly justified in his unease.”

Logan puts the cigar, still unlit, between his teeth, gnawing a bit at the end. “Yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about.” The wrapper frays under his canine, bits of leaf sticking to his tongue, an acrid taste spreading through his mouth. “You weren’t like this before.” 

The eyebrow that quirks up slightly is all the prompting Logan needs before he continues, “So what changed?”

Erik’s jaw twitches and he flags down a flight attendant, asking for the most expensive whiskey they have. He knocks that back, too, before he replies. “He could have ripped her apart.” Erik presses his lips together. Logan gnaws more at the cigar, a glutton for pain. “You saw what he did to Trask. Charles would never…” Erik trails off, cogitating. 

Logan flips the cigar around, the un-chewed end in his mouth now. “McCoy knows more’n I do, but the CliffsNotes version is that some wacko cut into his brain. He’s a weapon.” Charles looks over at Logan, his eyes betraying an utterly bovine innocence and his red, red lips in a perfect moue of discontent. Logan feels dutifully guilty. “Except when he’s not. Sometimes he’s just the prick I know and love to hate.”

“Don’t call him that,” Erik snaps, and Charles, all the way across first-class, sketches one eyebrow up into his hairline and lifts one corner of his mouth into an impish smirk. Hank captures his attention again almost immediately, and Charles’s face is immediately blank again. 

“Also, he runs hot and cold,” Logan mutters, and Erik makes an acquiescent noise, tipping back his second-and-a-half drink. He flicks a finger against his highball, and Hank’s glasses are askew next time Logan looks. 

Pricks, both of them, batshit fucking insane or otherwise.

***

When they land, it’s nighttime. 

It’s not really clear how Peter Maximoff ends up driving them to Xavier Mansion in a stolen Chevy, but Logan suspects the involvement of Charles and mind-mojo. 

“I trust you can find your own rooms,” Charles says amiably, sauntering into his palatial house with Hank hot on his heels. As he goes, Logan hears him discoursing to Hank on the merits and faults of medieval Latin practicals. The word “bawdy” is in there somewhere. 

Logan follows with Erik at a sedate pace, taking in the disrepair of the mansion. It will be some time yet before Charles can reopen the school, even if Hank gets him to agree. Erik looks like a phantom, someone who belonged here once. He makes his way to his old room, which, when Logan peers in after him, looks like a whirlwind came through it in Erik’s absence. 

Wall sconces are twisted beyond recognition of their original shape, picture frames fallen on the floor and shattered. A lampshade is on one side of the room, the lamp itself broken into three pieces on the other. Wallpaper is torn in great strips from the paneling. The only thing left untouched is Erik’s bed, just as rumpled and clean as if he’d left it only yesterday, strands of deep-brown hair clinging to the white pillowcase.

Erik gives the impression of being close to breaking, so Logan leaves, pulling the door behind him, even though it resists ( _Charles_ , he thinks as irritably as he can). 

Logan’s room hasn’t ever been inhabited. He throws himself onto the bedding with a lascivious noise of content, smiling into the pillow. 

***

Hank is awakened by a shriek in his mind, and the terror he feels is all too familiar as he jolts out of bed, running full-tilt toward Charles’s room. 

The walls shake as he turns the corner, portraits clattering to the floor, a bookshelf crashing over the balcony into the foyer, the chandelier swinging ominously and tinkling noisily. “Charles!” he yells, and then, in his mind, _Charles!_  

Logan stumbles out of his room, yelling obscenities, adding to the din of whipping air and trembling walls, and the shrieking in his mind, a high-pitched banshee wail. Three windows shatter, the glass splintering, tossed aside by the wind, embedding itself in the walls. 

Hank reaches Charles’s room as the floor panels start ripping themselves up, nails pulling free from the wood and whizzing away to parts unknown.

Charles is at the head of his bed, legs pulled to his chest, chin resting on his knees. He looks utterly placid, and Hank rushes to him, whispering urgently. “Charles.” Charles glances at him, vague disdain coloring his expression. “Charles,” he repeats, and the professor slides his gaze to the right, looking for all the world like a bored young man. A mighty crash signals that the chandelier has finally given out.

Hank presses his hand to the side of Charles’s face, which is cool to the touch, and slides his fingers into Charles’s hair. “Charles,” he whimpers, and there’s no response except Charles training his gaze on Hank’s face, which is probably a picture of worry and fear, the way it always is. 

“I’m sorry for this,” he murmurs, and draws Charles awkwardly into his arms. “ _Hail Hydra.”_

Charles goes limp in his arms, and Hank lets him fall to the bed fast asleep, checking his pulse, which is high, but safe, and his temperature, which has returned to normal. Hank gets up briefly, pulling the blankets over the professor, taking a deep breath and pressing a hand to his pocket, where there’s a syringe of unused serum. 

Somewhere else in the mansion, the rusted-out nails that Erik had been trying with all his power to keep away from his throat clattered to the floor.

***

In the wee hours of morning, the mansion is, predictably, a disaster area. Erik picks his way carefully over broken things, which litter the floor like so much high-end detritus. Logan sits at the edge of the upper level, legs dangling through the rails of the balcony, smoking a new cigar. 

It remains lit.

He could find the way to Charles’s room in his sleep. His feet remember the path from countless late-night chess games and scotches shared with conspiratorial smiles. 

The door is ajar, and Erik moves the hinges mindlessly, swinging it open silently. 

Dr. McCoy is sitting on the edge of Charles’s bed, looking down at him with what looks like defeated affection. His spine is curved, his shoulders slumped. He plucks at the blankets over Charles, then at his pocket, then the blankets again.

Charles is out cold under the covers, his breathing deep and even.

“Does he do this often?”

Hank flinches, a combination of the suddenness and severity of Erik’s presence. He looks up from what he’s doing, standing from the bed. 

“No,” he responds, and pushes up his black-framed glasses nervously. “It’s been better, recently. And he never…” Hank gestures sweepingly to the outside of the room. “Without a reason,” he finishes, and his eyes narrow at Erik. “It’s always merited, at least to him.”

Dr. McCoy is unfailingly polite—he's always been that way, Erik reflects as he steps aside to allow Hank to leave the room. All those manners can’t disguise his distaste at having Erik back in the mansion.

Erik has more important things to consider. 

He pushes the door shut behind him absently, meandering about the room. He picks up a pile of books on the floor, piling them atop the dresser between bookends neatly. Straightens a picture of a dogwood flower on the wall. 

When he can’t find anything else to fidget with, he turns to Charles’s sleeping form. 

He sits on the edge of the bed where he’d found Hank, looking ruminatively down at features that should be relaxed in sleep, but instead seem faintly troubled. Erik doesn’t put a hand on Charles or smooth his hair back like Hank would. For as much as he’s never been able to deny Charles anything, he’s also not the coddling type.

Erik is totally unprepared for the moment when Charles surges awake with a stifled scream, eyes catching on Erik’s and filling with tears as he murmurs rapidly, “Don’t make me sleep, oh, God, don’t make me sleep again, _please_.” 

It’s only as Erik shushes him that he realizes Charles was speaking Yiddish, and he tolerates Charles’s head on his shoulder with remarkable calm. (He calls out to all the metal in the room, and sure enough, Hank’s hidden a syringe of the serum he administers to keep Charles in check, between the mattress and the bed frame.) 

Charles quiets quickly, and Erik keeps whispering to him, feeling wet spots on his thin sleep shirt where Charles’s tears soak through. “I won’t make you sleep,” he promises, and the weight lifts from his shoulder.

“You’re scared,” Charles says gently, and he traces the line of Erik’s cheekbone with his fingertips, his lips pulling into a small smile. “I don’t need to be psychic to see that.”

Erik does his best to look unimpressed. “You pulled down the chandelier.” Charles is remarkably lucid, alone with Erik. His eyes dance with the mischief Erik remembers from the days of training Sean Cassidy to fly, and sunny days stretched out next to a chessboard. 

The fingertips brush a stray strand of hair from his forehead as Charles replies. “Yes, that’s quite unfortunate.” Erik can’t take his eyes off Charles’s face, his eyes, his lips. “Welcome home, I suppose.” He grimaces wryly, and _shit_.

“Old friend,” Erik sobs dryly, and Charles is shushing _him_ now, drawing him into a tight hug and splaying a hand across the back of his head, and Erik lets him, just like that first night in the water. Charles places snuffly kisses all over Erik’s hair, and then, when Erik pulls back, tear streaks trailing down his face, all over his brow and cheeks. 

Charles makes a disapproving noise when Erik shakily tries to detach himself, and says, “Erik, don’t be absurd,” in such a familiar tone that Erik laughs, an unsteady, thick-sounding bark, and allows Charles to pull him back to his chest. 

***

Erik, by himself, is the first thing Charles can see clearly. The fear-desire-anger-relief-indifference-attachment mix that accompanies him all surfaces, but it’s pure, unblemished by the pretense of ambiguity that follows everyone else Charles knows. He doesn’t need to repress anything that he feels for Erik, because Erik knows him too well already. 

It’s a strange feeling, to be at war with one’s own mind for so long and then for it to suddenly cease. 

It’s stranger to know, with a kind of detached calm, that Erik is the enemy. He’s sent Raven ( _Mystique_ , what a ridiculous name) to lockup, and his greatest opponent is shivering in his arms, and Charles feels _anger_ and _fear_ and _betrayal_.

Vastly outweighing that, though, is the relief of having Erik back where he can reach him. He’s been gone so long. Charles doesn’t know whether he’s thinking of himself or Erik.

Erik calms against his chest, and now they’ve both cried themselves out. Charles reaches out with his mind, wraps his intentions around the chess set across the bedroom. Pulls it to him, the board settling on the covers near them. “Erik,” he murmurs, and Erik looks up, eyes rimmed with red. “Fancy a game?”

“No,” he replies. Erik’s thoughts are so strong they project, a series of images, Raven freezing in her tracks, Trask—his head spinning on his shoulders, his body dropping to the floor. Rusty nails flying at Erik’s throat, a screaming wind behind the door. Erik thinks Charles is out of control, and he’s likely correct. He sees himself through Erik’s eyes, colored with fear and awe and pain and dread. 

He sees Hank, walking close by Charles into the kitchens at the Pentagon. He feels Erik’s loathing and his anguish, and the sheer delight at seeing Charles again, his heart jumping in his chest. They’ve had a rather difficult friendship, have Erik and he.

It’s easier, here, alone with the source of all this pain, to pull himself back into the present, to watch Erik’s eyes fall to his mouth, and to lean in just enough to press his lips to Erik’s.

Erik reacts like a circuit has closed, surging up to press Charles into the bed, and Charles makes a happy noise and wraps his legs around Erik, burying one hand in Erik’s hair and the other in his shirt, fisting, letting go, sliding under and stroking over skin dusted with fine hair. He scrapes his blunt nails over the thin down stippling Erik’s chest, and Erik groans and doffs the shirt, looking unamused as Charles gives him a lecherous “groovy mutation” grin.

Erik has these huge hands, and they’re all over Charles, who can’t press into every touch, but complies eagerly when Erik starts tugging at his clothes. He’s all intense concentration as he divests Charles of his shorts and thin cotton shirt, and his lips fall on Charles’s neck, biting, and Charles tips his head to the side, _yes_ , _please_. 

He runs his nails down Erik’s back and entices a loud groan from him, his hips thrusting against Charles’s bare thigh. He’s hard and his _want_ rolls off him in waves, and Charles feels them hit him twice as hard. He moves his hands down to Erik’s ass, grabbing, fingers digging in as he grinds up against a taut stomach. 

“Charles,” his name spills from Erik’s lips, “Lord have mercy—“ He involves himself in kissing Charles senseless again, which is a worthy pursuit. Charles feels chestnut hair slipping through his fingers, and occupies one hand with scraping trails across the skin of Erik’s shoulder blade. 

“Off,” Charles grumbles, and pushes at the waistband of Erik’s shorts, which edge their way off his hips and onto the floor before Erik can collect himself enough to do it himself. Perhaps telekinetically undressing him is a bit unfair, but Charles pleads level ground.

Erik doesn’t seem to mind, teasing at one of Charles’s nipples with his tongue, catching it none-too-gently between his teeth, sending a jolt of pain through Charles’s head and straight to his groin. “Please,” Charles gasps, and he doesn’t know what he’s begging for, just knows that Erik is everywhere all at once, his hand rough on Charles’s member, his thumb rubbing up just under the head, coaxing a drop of fluid from him, smearing it across the head. Charles shivers and Erik licks his thumb pensively. 

Charles pushes himself up on his forearms and pulls Erik in for another kiss, because he can’t bury himself far enough into Erik, it isn’t possible. Erik is under his skin, crawling there even when Charles is pulling down chandeliers with his mind. Especially then.

Where their touches were previously mostly idle, simply a longing to be closer, a sudden focus sweeps into their activity, and Erik’s lips fall to Charles’s chest again, worrying at the other nipple, nails scraping their way down Charles’s side, and he lifts his hips, grinding against Erik with a frustrated hiss. “Erik, _God_ ,” he pleads again, and Erik’s lips are against his hip, backing up to his navel, biting gently and licking the skin around it. “ _Erik_ ,” he grits out, which makes Erik laugh throatily against his stomach.

“Be patient,” he says, and looks up at Charles, meets his eyes with the most stunning smile he’s ever seen on his old friend, open and gratified, full of intent. Charles feels fear-desire-anger-relief-indifference-attachment, and then he feels _love_ , and it’s coming from Erik, too, mixed up with excitement and happiness.

He refuses to acknowledge it aloud, pressing his arousal into Erik’s palm hard. “ _Erik,_ ” he tries once more, and this time Erik obliges him, running his tongue over Charles’s cock with the curious air of trying to gauge Charles’s pleasure by the sounds he makes.

Erik’s interest in his cock is painfully teasing, bringing him up to the edge of release several times and then pulling off, kissing trails down Charles’s thighs or moving back up to his mouth. “Charles,” he murmurs into the kiss he presses to open red lips, and Charles is a trembling, gasping mess, and he’s flushed and gorgeous against the pillows. He has a sneaking suspicion Erik is projecting again.

Charles whimpers as Erik’s head lowers again, tongue trailing against his inner thigh, coaxing his legs further apart, until—

“ _Oh_ ,” Charles breathes, going perfectly still, a clatter of glass indicating that something has settled back on the nightstand. Erik’s caressing tongue strokes over his entrance, broad swipes followed by teasing little licks, so _close_ to what Charles needs, he _needs_. 

“Tell me what you need,” Erik murmurs into Charles’s thigh, steely eyes meeting bliss-clouded blue. 

Arched back. Brows drawn together. Charles’s thoughts flash through a dozen fantastic images, finally settling on Erik, flipping him over and delving into Charles with warm tongue and clever fingers. No sooner has he thought it than Erik’s hands are on him, hefting his limbs until Charles is on hands and knees, and Erik…

Charles is vaguely, distantly aware that he’s making a lot of noise, probably embarrassing himself terribly. Within his mind, he swims in pleasure, for once overwhelmed enough to _focus_ , and focus he does, on Erik’s tongue, on his fingers, slipping inside him—Erik’s mind—fake-strawberry lube from the dresser and the taste of Charles— _ecstasy_ , but still not _enough_.

Erik’s free hand moves up to stroke his own cock, hard and flushed and leaking against his stomach. Charles lets the pleasure overflow him, seeping into Erik’s mind and leveling him with Charles, every stroke of tongue or press of fingers making him see stars just as hard as Charles himself. 

Just when it becomes uncanny, their breaths falling in tandem, their moans the same German swear words and soft-accented English, the ecstasy sharpens within Charles and explodes outward; he makes a new, louder, even-more-embarrassing noise and comes against his stomach, dripping onto the bed. 

Warm, soft pleasure casts a blanket of red-black over his mind, and he feels Erik’s completion as a shower of white sparks. 

An ashtray falls from the dresser and shatters on the floor.

Erik pulls away, running a hand over the bottom of his face. “Charles.”

 _This is our second chance, and you’re leaving_ , Charles manages to think. In German. 

“Not leaving. Hank will…he’ll have heard, he’ll worry. The serum—“ Erik’s deeply-perturbed expression belies his words. Hearts are rent in two.

Charles falls from his hands and knees with a bereft sigh, curling up on the sheets, lying perfectly still in a small pool of his own semen. 

Erik just cleans himself up and departs. 

True to form, Hank is in the room, worried and fussy, within seconds. Charles feels his small bit of sanity slipping away as Erik grows more and more distant. 

“I lost control,” he murmurs, and Hank just makes matronly fretting sounds.

***

Logan catches Erik in the main hall as the sun is starting to peek into the windows. “Goin’ somewhere, bub?” he asks skeptically, his eyebrow raising as he takes in the scent of sex and Charles that’s a thick fog around Erik. “Plots to plot, schemes to scheme?”

“A scheme and a plot are the same thing,” Erik says acidly, pulling his leather jacket tighter around himself.

The ashes Logan taps from his cigar fall onto the floor and leave a scorch mark. “Semantics. You didn’t answer the question.”

Erik stands stiffly as he looks irritably at Logan. “I suppose you’re going to tell me you won’t let me leave.”

Logan raises both eyebrows this time, like Erik’s being willfully obtuse. “Really?” He takes a long drag on the cigar, holds it in for a few seconds, and exhales right into Erik’s face. Erik turns his face away and rolls his eyes. “I’m not an idiot. Where I come from, it took you guys a good…twenty years or so to realize you’re dumbasses. But there’s shit needs doing. School’s gotta open. Prof’s gotta get better. You can’t be here.”

When Erik just gawps, Logan continues, waving his cigar, pontificating. “There’s been a lack of crazy and a surplus of sex in this house for the past…” Logan looks at his watch, “…three hours. You fucked him sane, I don’t know. I _do_ know that you can’t be here. You guys will fight, and you’ll screw, and you’ll fall in love. He’ll destroy expensive shit, you’ll destroy everything he loves. So you gotta go.” Logan moves away from the door and gives Erik a look that’s not pity.

Logan looks like he knows the feeling firsthand.

Something tugs uncomfortably at Erik’s heart as Logan says, “So,” and clears his throat. “Don’t let the door hit your magnetic ass on the way out.”

Erik nods his concession and walks out into the early-morning sun.

Mystique is locked up in Paris. 

He already has a goal, and it starts with her.

***

**Epilogue:**

“You never come to see me without cause,” Erik quips as the guard wheels in the plastic chair. Charles looks happy to see him, as far as he can tell. The guard leaves, and Erik gestures to the plastic chess set on the table. “Care for a game?”

As Charles moves the first white pawn, Erik recalls a time when Charles could have moved the pawn, could have thrown the board across the room, could have killed Erik, without ever touching any of them. 

“What are you reading?” Charles inquires, as if he can’t read Erik’s mind. 

Erik smiles at him over the board. “Why do you ask?”

Charles watches him move his next piece studiously. He glances at the board, then fixes his gaze on Erik again. “You asked why I came here. Since I don’t have a reason, surely you’ll tell me what you’re reading. I do enjoy foisting your reading choices on the students.”

“Giving them a taste of what they’re up against?” Erik japes, and Charles moves a piece. 

“Inflicting you upon them indirectly.” Charles doesn’t say _I miss you_ and Erik doesn’t tell him he knows. 

 _“You guys will fight, and you’ll screw, and you’ll fall in love. He’ll destroy expensive shit, and you’ll destroy everything he loves.”_  

Logan’s voice grates in his memory as he watches Charles, older now, staring broodingly down at the chessboard. He sees the young man who gave him his full power, the world-weary adult who pulled a chandelier from the ceiling with his mind, and the headmaster of a school full of teenaged mutants, and he’s fought them all a hundred times over and loved them the whole time.

“I’m returning to the _Consolation of Philosophy_ ,” Erik finally defers “The same philosophy. In Latin, though. Do you teach them Latin, Charles?”

“Your Greek was always your weaker language,” Charles remarks. “No, I don’t, not unless they ask.”

“It loses something of its wonder in English.”

For a time, they are silent, moving pieces around the board.

Erik breaks the silence. “Do inflict it upon them.” 

Charles’s answering smile states clearly that he knows what Erik’s doing and will be party to none of it. “They need to learn what came before 500 C.E.,” he says patronizingly, and it holds the weight of their past. “Picking up there is nothing short of sadistic.”

“He synopsizes Aristotle well,” Erik contends.

“You know as well as I,” Charles near-whispers, “that a single explanation will never suffice. There’s so much more to history than what one scholar can say.” He meets Erik’s eyes once again and galvanizes that inevitable _something_ between them.

“Mate.”


End file.
